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Rudd Adoption Research Scholars

Rudd Adoption Research Scholars have received graduate level training in adoption research during residence in the Rudd Adoption Research Program. This includes graduate students who have participated in the Rudd Adoption Research Lab at UMass Amherst, participants in the Rudd Summer Adoption Research Institutes, and visiting scholars to the  Rudd Adoption Research Program.

Sofia Stepanyan

Graduate Student, University of California, Riverside

Sofia has a broad background in clinical, forensic, and developmental psychology. She is currently working on several projects that touch on comprehensive facets of adoption research including the intricate role of individual and familial factors on the well-being of children and adolescents. She has papers in the process of journal submission using adoptive families as the sample. Sofia is interested in the development of the ethnic/racial identity in cross cultural and cross racial adoption cases. She looks forward to expanding the breadth of her knowledge and the depth of her understanding of adoption research..

Katheryn Tavares

Manager, Program Development & Youth Transition Services, Adoption Rhode Island

Katheryn Tavares, MSW is the primary person responsible for data, evaluation, and research for Adoption Rhode Island, the state’s adoption exchange and leading resource for adoption and permanency-related policy and practice. Katheryn was the lead in developing a program to evaluate the use of several adoption-competent and trauma-informed practices to improve outcomes at risk of aging out of foster care without permanency and has a research goal to explore how to continue to use research and evaluation to inform advocacy and policymaking. Katheryn has over 10 years of experience in human services, including community engagement, systems advocacy, program development and administrative leadership. In addition to her work at Adoption Rhode Island, Katheryn serves as Adjunct Faculty at the Rhode Island College School of Social Work. She earned both her Bachelors and Masters in Social Work from Rhode Island College and completed Dr. Joyce McGuire Pavao’s All Adoptions Consulting and Training (AACT) Certificate Program in Adoption Competency.

Johanne Thomson-Sweeny

Graduate Student, School of Social Work, Université de Montréal

Johanne’s research interest as a master’s student was to understand international-adult adoptees’ experience in regard to contact with birth families initiated through communication technology. In early 2018, Johanne began her involvement with a project investigating adoptive parents’ international adoption journey. She was a member of a student committee that assisted in the organization of the ICAR6 conference. Her long-term goal is to explore the issues internationally adopted adults face in order to properly offer services and resources to facilitate success through their journey.

Cassandra Vázquez

Graduate Student, Experimental Psychology (Developmental Psychology concentration), University of Kentucky

Cassandra is interested in sexuality communication among adoptive families and families headed by sexual and gender minority parents. Specifically, she would like to explore how family structure (e.g., LGBTQ parents; adoptive status) interacts with family processes (e.g., parent-child attachment) and shapes parent-child communication characteristics and explanatory mechanisms of adolescent sexuality, relationships, and associated developmental outcomes. She is currently involved in several projects, including retrospective narratives of emerging adults for reported feelings of difference in childhood based on gender or sexuality, and a study focusing on the perspectives of birth relatives’ experiences of contact with adoptive families headed by parents diverse in sexual orientation.

Dongwei Wang

Data Manager/Analyst, Rudd Adoption Research Program

Dongwei joined the Rudd Adoption Research Program in February 2018 after completing her graduate studies in educational psychology & quantitative research methods. Her expertise includes knowledge of a variety of statistical techniques and she continues to learn additional data management and research skills. She is primarily responsible for managing data analysis and providing consultation for faculty and students conducting family and adoption related research. Dongwei also serves as a methodology consultant for the Center for Research on Families where she provides consultation services in study design and statistical analysis.

Jing Wang

Graduate Student, Developmental Psychology, University of California, Riverside

Jing is currently working with adoption data examining the relationship between infertility and parenting stress. She is using adoption data to examine the impact of social skills on peer acceptance on adopted children. In addition, her interests include the development of ethnic/racial identity among international/transracial adoptees. Jing has extensive experience working in research labs globally. Her past research includes conducting lab observations and interviewing children and parents to collect datasets to code child behavior. Her long-term goal is to bridge the gap between adoption research and the real life application in the adoption community.

Ellen Weihenmayer

Doctoral student, Lesley University Graduate School of Education

Ellen Weihenmayer is a doctoral student with research interests surrounding adults adopted in childhood. Ellen is an adoptee and adoptive parent currently exploring themes of adoptive identity through a narrative approach. She uses pre-adoption artifacts as data and wonders how these may add depth and value to a narrative style of research.

 

Erica Wendel

Postdoctoral Fellow, Clinical Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles

Erica’s research interests shifted from trauma-informed care in schools, and deaf and hard of hearing towards adoption-specific questions when she began her fellowship position with UCLA TIES for Families. She currently serves as co-lead on two different research projects: one of them focuses on infant mental health within the foster care and foster-adopt population; the other examines the effect of several medical risk factors on the development of parent-child attachment bonds. Her professional objective is to contribute to research for attachment-based and trauma-informed interventions for adoptive and foster-adopt families.

Annie Wright

PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Commonwealth University

Annie Wright is an Assistant Professor and Clinical Psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research and clinical interests include understanding risk and promoting resilience among youth who have been separated from their parents; namely, youth in foster care, those who have been adopted, or those who have experienced parental incarceration. Annie completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Rudd from 2020-2021.

Adeline Wyman Battalen

Director Social Work Training Program, Harvard University

Addie Wyman Battalen, PhD, LICSW is Director of the Social Work Training Program, Team Leader, and Therapist in the student counseling center at Harvard University. Dr. Wyman Battalen holds a PhD from the Boston College School of Social Work, an MS in Social Work from Columbia University, and a BA in Human Development and Social Relations from Earlham College. Addie also teaches at the Boston College School of Social Work. Her interest in adoption includes adapting clinical interventions to support diverse family structures.

Xian Zheng

Graduate Student, Tufts University

Xian Zhang is a graduate student of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. Her research revolves around the role of culture in children and families. She currently works with Dr. Ellen Pinderhughes on the depth of birth culture exposure in adoptive families raising children who are of a different race to parents. Xian’s other research project examines transnational separation among Chinese immigrant families. She hopes to understand ways in which culture is related to the practice of sending U.S.-born babies to China to be raised by grandparents.

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